sense of possession upon earth filled his whole soul with the hope of possession after death. Henry felt, for the first time in his life, as if he had a firm standing-ground for faith. For the first time he looked at the sunset sky, he listened to the birds and children, he smelled the perfume of the earth, and there was no bitterness in his soul. He smiled a smile of utter peace which harmonized with it all, and the conviction of endless happiness and a hereafter seemed to expand all his consciousness.
Chapter IV
The dining-room in the White homestead was a large, low room whose southward windows were shaded at this season with a cloud of gold-green young grape leaves. The paper was a nondescript pattern, a large satin scroll on white. The room was wainscoted in white, and the panel-work around the great chimney was beautiful. A Franklin stove with a pattern of grape-vines was built into the chimney under the high mantel. Sylvia regarded this dubiously.
“I don't think much of that old-fashioned Franklin stove,” she told Henry. “Why Abrahama had it left in, after she had her nice furnace, beats me. Seems to me we had better have it taken out, and have a nice board, covered with paper to match this on the room, put there instead. There's a big roll of the paper up garret, and it ain't faded a mite.”
“Mr. Allen will like it just the way it is,” said Henry, regarding the old stove with a sneaking admiration of which he was ashamed. It had always seemed to him that Sylvia's taste must be better than his. He had always thought vaguely of women as creatures of taste.
“I think maybe he'll like a fire in it sometimes,” he said, timidly.
“A fire, when there's a furnace?”
“I mean chilly days in the fall, before we start the furnace.”
“Then we could have that nice air-tight that we had in the other house put up. If we had a fire in this old thing the heat would all go up chimney.”
“But it would look kind of pretty.”
“I was brought up to think a fire was for warmth, not for looks,” said Sylvia, tartly. She had lost the odd expression which Henry had dimly perceived several days before, or she was able to successfully keep it in abeyance; still, there was no doubt that a strange and subtle change had occurred within the woman. Henry was constantly looking at her when she spoke, because he vaguely detected unwonted tones in her familiar voice; that voice which had come to seem almost as his own. He was constantly surprised at a look in the familiar eyes, which had seemed heretofore to gaze at life in entire unison with his own.
He often turned upon Sylvia and asked her abruptly if she did not feel well, and what was the matter; and when she replied, as she always did, that nothing whatever was the matter, continued to regard her with a frown of perplexity, from which she turned with a switch of her skirts and a hitch of her slender shoulders. Sylvia, while she still evinced exultation over her new possessions, seemed to do so fiercely and defiantly.
When Horace Allen arrived she greeted him, and ushered him into her new domain with a pride which had in it something almost repellent. At supper-time she led him into the dining-room and glanced around, then at him.
“Well,” said she, “don't you think it was about time we had something nice like this, after we had pulled and tugged for nothing all our lives? Don't you think we deserve it if anybody does?”
“I certainly do,” replied Horace Allen, warmly; yet he regarded her with somewhat the same look of astonishment as Henry. It did not seem to him that it could be Sylvia Whitman who was speaking. The thought crossed his mind, as he took his place at the table, that possibly coming late in life, after so many deprivations, good-fortune had disturbed temporarily the even balance of her good New England sense.
Then he looked about him with delight. “I say, this is great!” he cried, boyishly. There was something incurably boyish about Horace Allen, although he was long past thirty. “By George, that Chippendale sideboard is a beauty,” he said, gazing across at a fine old piece full of dull high lights across its graceful surfaces.
Sylvia colored with pleasure, but she had been brought up to disclaim her possessions to others than her own family. “Mrs. Jim Jones has got a beautiful one she bought selling Calkin's soap,” she said. “She thinks it's prettier than this, and I must say it's real handsome. It's solid oak and has a looking-glass on it. This hasn't got any glass.”
Horace laughed. He gazed at a corner-closet with diamond-paned doors.
“That is a perfectly jolly closet, too,” he said; “and those are perfect treasures of old dishes.”
“I think they are rather pretty,” said Henry. He was conscious of an admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife's. This time Sylvia spoke quite in earnest. As far as the Indian china was concerned, she had her convictions. She was a cheap realist to the bone.
She sniffed. “I suppose there's those that likes it,” said she, “but as for me, I can't see how anybody with eyes in their heads can look twice at old, cloudy, blue stuff like that when they can have nice, clear, white ware, with flowers on it that are flowers, like this Calkin's soap set. There ain't a thing on the china in that closet that's natural. Whoever saw a prospect all in blue, the trees and plants, and heathen houses, and the heathen, all blue? I like things to be natural, myself.”
Horace laughed, and extended his plate for another piece of pie.
“It's an acquired taste,” he said.
“I never had any time to acquire tastes. I kept what the Lord gave me,” said Sylvia, but she smiled. She was delighted because Horace had taken a second piece of pie.
“I didn't know as you'd relish our fare after living in a Boston hotel all your vacation,” said she.
“People can talk about hotel tables all they want to,” declared Horace. “Give me home cooking like yours every time. I haven't eaten a blessed thing that tasted good since I went away.”
Henry and Sylvia looked lovingly at Horace. He was a large man, blond, with a thick shock of fair hair, and he wore gray tweeds rather loose for him, which had always distressed Sylvia. She had often told Henry that it seemed to her if he would wear a nice suit of black broadcloth it would be more in keeping with his position as high-school principal. He wore a red tie, too, and Sylvia had an inborn conviction that red was not to be worn by fair people, male or female.
However, she loved and admired Horace in spite of these minor drawbacks, and had a fiercely maternal impulse of protection towards him. She was convinced that every mother in East Westland, with a marriageable daughter, and every daughter, had matrimonial designs upon him; and she considered that none of them were good enough for him. She did not wish him to marry in any case. She had suspicions about young women whom he might have met while on his vacation.
After supper, when the dishes had been cleared away, and they sat in the large south room, and Horace had admired that and its furnishings, Sylvia led up to the subject.
“I suppose you know a good many people in Boston,” she remarked.
“Yes,” replied Horace. “You know, I was born and brought up and educated there, and lived there until my people died.”
“I suppose you know a good many young
